We have a word of the week and I have found that it works really well but I wouldn't want to use a standard list.
We use words related to our topic, so have had glimmering related to treasure for our pirate topic, we have words which arise in our story, or words which the children bring in from home, startled was a fab one which one of my Year R boys brought it and used correctly when he explained it to us; we have regularly been startled ever since! Making them more relevant means that the children are more likely to use and remember them. hth.